


Sunshine

by ShadowSelene (Shadowdianne)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 14:49:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14547075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/ShadowSelene
Summary: Imagine person a singing you are my sunshine as person b slowly dies in their arms asked by evilregalswen“No.” Emma shook her head before repeating herself, locks bouncing. “No, no. Regina. No. It’s just a wound, we will get you patched up. I just need a second. Ok?”





	Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evilregalswen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilregalswen/gifts).



Emma saw the blast, a bright flash that blinded her for a moment, forcing her to turn her upper body so her eyes didn’t burn off, a sudden push moving her a few feet at her right, the blast sweeping past her. The heat of the wave charred away the attack she had been brewing, her dirty white colored magic blinking for a moment before it disappeared completely, gone in the nighttime breeze. The moment she opened her eyes again, however, her body still buzzing from the unspent magic, she didn’t focus on the retreating figure but on another one, smaller. The still standing lampposts creating enough lights within the shadows that felt as if having been taken the city for Emma to distinguish Regina’s ragged breathing, her chest expanding ever so slowly as she tried to breathe. A pool of nasty red had begun to stain the white blouse Regina was wearing, patches of skin glowing purple where her magic shield had been shattered away by the blast.

“No!”

Boots slipping in the wet road, hands first onto the pebbled floor, Emma fuddled for the other woman’s pulse only to find it sluggish, tired as Regina’s face turned to her, dark eyes widening as pain was registered.

“Don’t move.” Emma’s voice lacked strength but, as she said, it, calling for her magic while she did so, she felt better for it. She, however, was lost beyond that and, as magic pooled on her wrists, she licked her lips, nervous. She wasn’t good at none of this, her mind supplied, she was the one who punched her way through, knowing that Regina would be there, mending and explaining whatever she had missed.

Now, as she stared at Regina’s quickly dropping eyelids, Emma could feel her throat closing, sizing, as the burning feeling of tears climbing up her tear ducts made her shake her head. The blood was beginning to darken her own clothes as well but she didn’t mind, pushing Regina’s head until she had it safely on her lap, the brunette seemingly unable to stand.

“Emma. Is useless.”

The even tone, the admission beneath it, froze Emma’s heart but kept trying to channel as much magic as possible, instructing it to funnel through Regina’s wounds, blouse and all. Regina was eyeing her with something that, at any other given moment, would make Emma take a step backwards, afraid of herself, of what she would do, of what she would admit. In that moment, however, she just let out a small “no” that resonated through them, eliciting a small smile from the older woman. One that was quickly broken a trickle of blood Emma quickly tried to clean with her thumb, magic still oozing out of her.

“We’ve been through far too much Regina, for me to let you go in the middle of Storybrooke.”

Regina didn’t answer to that, no directly, but a tired chuckle made her frame tremble as the beginning of thundering footsteps and screams began to reach the two of them, a tired David screaming “ _Zelena killed it!”_ that Emma didn’t find any strength within herself to answer to.

“It’s not a matter of choice, dear.”

A wet, short coughing fit punctuating each word, Regina wheezed before looking at Emma, Snow’s screams beginning to fade, the faintest rain starting to fall, the rice-size drops impossibly cold.

“No.” Emma shook her head before repeating herself, locks bouncing. “No, no. Regina. No. It’s just a wound, we will get you patched up. I just need a second. Ok?”

She was rambling, delirious even but she hated, _hated_ , whenever Regina walked first into a dangerous situation, not seeming to care twice of what the consequences for her could be. She refused that a blast that had been directed at herself turned to be anything else but something they could both talk about in a few hours, a glass of cider on her hand and the never going wish to be strong enough to kiss Regina’s lips, to tell her…

Blood was starting to come slower now but the wounds didn’t seem to be closing, the magic of the blast still working, keeping them open. A detail Emma realized she hadn’t realized before.

But Regina had, her mind told her. Regina had seen that her magic was useless.

“Please, Regina.” Desperate, Emma glanced at the brunette, chin quivering. “Don’t.”

_“You are my sunshine_

_My only sunshine.”_

Later, much later, Emma would say that she had simply seen the words writing themselves on the back of her eyelids, clear and bleeding as Regina’s wounds. Perhaps, she would admit with a broken, jagged voice, she had done it just so Regina could mock her, her terrible voice, the way she never seemed able to hit a note right.

At the end, however, Regina simply smiled at her and whispered Henry’s name. A last promise that Emma answered blindly with a nod, a yes.

“Don’t take my sunshine away…” As Emma’s voice finally broke, tears running down her cheeks Regina’s eyes closed, her lips parting as she exhaled her last breath. Her body was still warm and Emma closed her hand tighter on her hold on the other woman’s shoulder, her fingertips aching as the last verse of the song clung between them, the wet road cold beneath her jeans. It didn’t matter to her, however, as she took on Regina’s clammy skin, the magic that had become a constant on Emma’s subconscious ever since the first curse had been broken dimming as she sobbed, shoulders trembling as she clung onto the other woman’s clothes, wishing for her to return.

“Emma?”

She could hear Snow’s voice, calling for her from a place that felt too far away. Licking her chapped lips, Emma’s chest heaved, a fresh wave of tears burning their way up her eyes, turning everything else blurry except for Regina’s body, its weight the only thing anchoring her as her mind reeled.

“ _You won’t know…”_ She began again, quieter this time, off-tune and voice shaking. Caressing the brunette’s cheek with her left hand, she called for her magic, a rain of sparkling dots falling from her fingertips, dusting the older woman’s face with a fractal of the light she now felt leaving her body; swallowed by her grief.

She hadn’t been fast enough, her mind whispered, the insidious tone reminiscent of Cora, of Rumplestiskin back when she had transformed into the Dark One. If she had been stronger, wiser, if she had dared to tell her…

“Emma.”

This time the voice did seem closer but still as if being underwater, her ears not working properly as she bent, her chest expanding while trying to breath, sobs slipping through her lips as she tried to close them, a distant whine she recognized later as hers filling the air.

It was Snow’s hands what made her blink, the smell of ozone, of magic, entering her nostrils as she, bleary, eyes her mother whose eyes were wet as well, a note of profound regret echoing on her voice as she called for her, one hand taking hers, trying to pry her fingers from Regina’s shoulder.

“She is gone, Emma.”

_“You'll never know, dear,_

_How much I love you.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Ups(?)


End file.
